A random status update

First, hats off to Chris Double who continues to do cool stuff with his continuation-based web framework. His latest hack is a to do list web app that uses a capability-based security model. Instead of having to remember a username/password, you bookmark a randomly-generated URL.

Last week I acquired an Apple Mac. This has given me a chance to fix some long-standing problems in Factor on Mac OS X. I got the UI running, and I also fixed a couple of relocation bugs in the compiler.

I have also started overhauling the UI to use OpenGL for rendering instead of SDL. So far, I've implemented all graphics primitives except for text, developed a FreeType binding, and started writing on some code to display FreeType-rendered glyphs as OpenGL textures.

Moving to OpenGL will provide increased performance and better eye-candy, and is one step in my plan to get rid of SDL altogether. SDL has some annoying limitations, like only supporting one top level window, not providing any way to access the clipboard, and more. Instead of SDL, the UI will have platform-specific backends; the set I'm looking at so far is Carbon, X11 and Windows. I will personally develop the Carbon backend -- I ordered a book on this topic and it is coming in the mail. I might also do the X11 backend later if nobody else wants to. As for Windows, a couple of people have already expressed interest in helping out.

Here is a screenshot of what the OpenGL rendering looks like os far:



Not very pretty -- there is a rendering flaw with polygon outlines, and of course, text is missing.